Effective threat detection is critical to achieving a mature cybersecurity posture. Yet with so many threat detection options on the market, from managed detection and response (MDR) to managed security service providers (MSSPs) to security information and event management (SIEM), choosing the most effective one for your organization can be challenging.

The threat landscape has evolved rapidly in recent years due to major changes in the way organizations operate and adopt new technologies. Cloud services such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) have seen massive growth over the last decade. With accelerated digital transformation, increased remote working and cloud adoption, the attack surface has increased for most organizations.

Social engineering in its many forms took center stage in Q3 2023. The quarter saw “human hacking” evolve from a long-standing security challenge to threat actors’ method of choice. This was evidenced by our observations of the dramatic escalation of social engineering tactics, with significant increases in phishing, smishing, valid accounts, voice phishing and other tactics—adding up to the highest volume of incidents we have seen in 2023.

On October 16, 2023, Kroll Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) analysts were made aware of an ongoing exploitation of a recently discovered vulnerability within the web user interface (UI) functionality of Cisco IOS XE (CVE-2023-20198). This security flaw is critical with a CVSS score of 10.